ColorDirector is a powerful tool for correcting and enhancing the colours within a video.

At its simplest you might just use some of the program's global tools to adjust colour temperature, tint, exposure, contrast and more. There are a vast array of options here, so for instance deciding just to tweak Saturation will give you sliders for "Red", "Orange", "Yellow", "Green", "Aqua", "Blue", "Purple" and "Magenta", giving you plenty of scope for fine-tuning.

You can also select a colour from your source video, and have that replaced by something else (within a source tolerance, anyway).

ColorDirector's Regional Adjustment Tools allow you to define masks, specifying the area you'd like to affect (and these can even use motion tracking, meaning you can change the colour of moving objects).

And you can change your own video colours to any of a set of presets - "60s Home Movie", "Dreamy", "Sunny Day", "Sunset" and more - or define a custom set of colours to suit your needs.

The program is designed to be run as an addon to CyberLink PowerDirector, and if you do this then you'll find you can export your project to PowerDirector when you're done, for more in-depth editing.

But ColorDirector also works just fine as a stand-alone colour correction tool. It will import most videos without difficulty; when you're finished, the corrected movie can be exported as a video in many common formats (MP4, MPG, WMV, M2TS and more); or you can upload the clip to YouTube from within the program.

Please note, for some inexplicable reason ColorDirector (trial version) will by default install Google Toolbar during its setup process. If this isn't what you want, pay close attention and clear the "Install the free Google toolbar..." box when it appears.

Review by Mike Williams.